


Beside the Serpentine: Hyde Park

by Tammany



Series: The Parks of London [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First times late in life, Gen, M/M, Quiet love., post-season 3, summer story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7839007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am grouping this with the story originally posted as "Beside the Long Water." I have updated the name to "Beside the Long Water: Kensington Gardens," and am now adding this new story. I do not know if I will continue to work my way through London's parks and gardens, but as I decided these two stories are part of the same approximate space-time-continuum, and because both were park-based, I thought I'd at least pair them up with each other.</p><p>This is love in late life. It's very quiet. It's more resolved at the end than either man realizes--they've crossed their Rubicon and the rest is going to fall into place very gently and dancingly. Life has just improved for these two in ways they can hardly even imagine right now. But we will leave them to their lack of clairvoyance even as we ourselves gloat knowing it all just got very rose-colored and contented. Let them realize for themselves that everything just got better. </p><p>I hope you like it. It's not loud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beside the Serpentine: Hyde Park

Greg might, once, have wondered about Mycroft Holmes as a lover—once, when he was young, before he married. Once, maybe, after the divorce, when he was reborn and curious. But he didn’t know Mycroft when he was young, and perhaps knew him too well after the divorce. It didn’t occur to him to wonder, in spite of his curiosity—in spite of his recovery of the boy he’d once been, who liked a man in bed as much as he liked a woman.

It wasn’t as though Mycroft Holmes encouraged such thoughts, after all. The great silence, that man was—distant, reserved, a fortress equipped for a siege that never arrived. He signaled to the world his unavailability.

Some of his subordinates gossiped. He was rumored to take lovers—a rumor that Sherlock seemed to confirm, though with no detail added beyond a critical snort and a bitter murmur that Mycroft failed to be humanized even by his vices. Greg was busy, and had never been given to throwing himself at lost causes, so it was no surprise that he was quite content to know that much—and to leave Mycroft Holmes to mind his own sex life without further conjecture on Greg’s part. He certainly never wondered if Mycroft thought about him.

He was content as things stood. He and Mycroft worked together, though usually at a distance. They coordinated with each other, crossed paths occasionally, sent each other encrypted information on rare occasions. Once a quarter Greg came in to Babylon-on-Thames and allowed himself to be debriefed. Their routines brushed up against each other when Mycroft felt it necessary to show up at one of Sherlock’s MET crime sites, or, similarly, when Greg felt a problem was of sufficient immediacy as to warrant an unannounced visit to one of Mycroft’s many offices. Still, all said and done, they saw each other only rarely; when they did they were friendly in a professional way for the most part. Oh, occasionally Mycroft would be entirely too convinced of his own vast brilliance and importance, and Greg would patiently wait for a moment he could knock the man off his high horse. Similarly, Mycroft might find the field agent just a tad too cocky and emotional, and would strip his bumptiousness from him with a single dry sentence and a languid dismissal. But on the whole they got on—neither more nor less. They got on.

Neither would have known what to say or think had someone suggested that both were lonely—and might, together, be less so. This is important to understand: love is a thing of the mind as much as the body, of creative imagination as much as logic. Love unconsidered seldom buds, much less blossoms. The potential is inert, un-quickened. Without spirit or soul. There may be darkness, and water—but darkness does not move upon the face of the water. Nothing stirs to breathe the world into life.

So things stood one mild July evening.

“Long time no see,” Greg said, greeting Mycroft as he walked sedately up to the park bench by the Serpentine. It was a busy evening—a concert was on at the Great Oak Stage, and though the music was already under way there were latecomers bustling through the soft, glimmering twilight headed for the performance area. Mycroft stood out, but in a good way—as always. Greg frowned as his mind searched for vocabulary to identify Mycroft’s clothing. He was quite sure commonplace words like “trousers” and “shirt sleeves” and “waistcoat” were inadequate to the task of conveying such shimmering cool nonchalance.

“What is that?” he growled, leaning back against the slats of the bench and fishing a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“What is what?” Mycroft said. He had his jacket draped over his elbow; his shirt was so thin it approached sheer; his weskit was seriously dashing—double-breasted, shawl collared, with some kind of draping or creasing that pulled it in tight around his waist. He wore a bow tie…

“That,” Greg said, gesturing with the pack and scowling. “What you’re wearing. There must be words for it, so’s the tailor can put it down on the receipt—but what is it? It’s not off-the-rack Marks and Spencer summer suit, cotton-poly blend, I know that much.”

Mycroft’s mouth puckered briefly, amusement shining in his eyes. He seated himself on the far end of the bench, leaving plenty of atmosphere to circulate between himself and Greg. He draped the jacket over the back of the bench, then stretched out in a relaxed manner, letting his long, long legs extend out onto the pavement, crossing them at the ankle. He was wearing white canvas shoes!  Much too elegant to be trainers, but…they were summer shoes, screaming to the world that Mycroft Holmes was not at the office, not on duty, not in the least bit his ordinary professional self. He looked down his own body, and said, contemplatively, “Oh, this old thing. Schmattas…” His voice laughed, though.

Greg huffed. “That’s right—take the piss out of me. I mean it—what’s it really called?”

“It’s an informal summer suit. Linen-silk suiting. The silk’s the slightly slubbed turquoise thread running through the pale cream.”

“Turquoise.”

“Look closely. It’s not so dark you can’t see it yet.”

Greg glanced over, then leaned a bit closer. “Ok. So—slubbed means nubbly?”

“Precisely. Just a slight slubbing—enough to give the fabric a touch of body and texture.”

“And just a bit of turquoise, too, yeah.”

“Exactly. Summer suit, linen-silk blend, turquoise slubbed silk thread. Pima cotton shirt—bespoke, but only because my proportions are beastly hard to fit. The waistcoat’s a one-off I had made up special, just a shade lighter than the suit with the same turquoise picked up in the hairstreak piping around the edges.”

“I might have known it was all words like that,” Greg said, lighting his cigarette. When he was done he offered the pack to Mycroft. “Want one? I actually have filtered for a change.”

“No. Perhaps later. I find the scent of tobacco can be overpowering on a warm evening.”

Greg shrugged and put the pack away in his pocket. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

The music from the stage carried beautifully. Greg could not easily imagine paying the money for a seat when he could hear it as well from the bench—and be spared the crush and heat of the crowd. As a young man he’d have passionately argued otherwise, loving the mob and the bustle and the view and the immediacy of it all. As a man on the leading edge of old age, he was less convinced.

“Nice flute,” he said to Mycroft.

“James Galway,” Mycroft responded, with slightly acid amusement. “One would expect no less.”

“Um.” Greg drew on the cigarette. He glanced around. “Your people are tracking this, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll let us know if they think there’s anything hinky?”

“I would certainly expect no less of them.”

Both men reviewed the immediate area under the guise of mere leisurely people-watching.

“Over there—by the ice-lolly cart.”

“Ah, yes. There she is. And Mr. Wang’s observer is the very blond European gentleman pretending he wishes to swim in the Lido…He would be more convincing if he ceased dipping his toes in and just waded in.”

“Might miss something if he actually committed,” Lestrade grunted. “And if he went in he’d fry his audio pickup. Think he can actually hear anything?”

“Nothing useful,” Mycroft asserted, smug and satisfied and looking anywhere but at the gentleman behind them on the south side of the Serpentine. “Between the music and the ambient noise and the white noise generator I’m wearing it would be a wonder if he could make out more than mumble-mumble-feedback-squeal.”

Greg choked back a chortle. He was not above a bit of malicious glee at the expense of the players on the other side. “Got anything planned for this meet?”

“Mere misdirection, I am afraid. They are always so much more susceptible when they think we’re up to something.” He lifted his head as the performers shifted. “Ah. Welsh boy's choir. Boys Aloud, I believe. My word—that young treble has a superb upper range, but if he goes any higher the park will be swarming with canines looking for their masters.”

“Or bats.” Greg swatted at a mosquito. “Can never have too many bats here by the water, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.”

“’S true anyway.”

“Hummph. I suppose.”

“Want me to give you something before we go? So they think there’s been a drop?”

Mycroft considered. “Perhaps. Maybe—to begin with, one of those cigarettes would be welcome after all. The heat’s dropping quite nicely now the sun’s almost gone.”

Greg leaned over and shook out a fag, then offered his lighter. Mycroft fumbled with his usual lack of finesse.

“If you smoked more often you’d manage it all more neatly.”

“There’s a place in the world for a few things I do less than superbly. They're singing Calon Lan.”

“It’s a concert of Celtic music.”

“Will there be step dancing?”

“No idea. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I might call Sherlock if there were. He’s quite fond of dancing.”

Greg swallowed a mouthful of smoke and choked, laughing at the image of Sherlock leaping and bouncing around on his toes with his fists clenched straight down at his thighs, for all the world like a furious grasshopper on his beloved seven-percent solution of cocaine.  “Sherlock? Dancing?”

“A fascination of his. He’s quite good. He’d have made a splendid ballerino.”

Greg choked harder. “Ballerino? You mean there really is such a thing?”

“Of course. For goodness sake, stop that sniggering. British operatives do not snigger at a covert drop.”

“We’re dead in the open—this is more of an overt drop.”

“Arse…you know what I mean.”

“But—ballerino.” He went off again, eyes tearing from the laughter. Mycroft sat patiently, waiting him out. He hummed the last verse and chorus of Calon Lan along with the treble, his voice a muzzy, oboe-esque tenor. He had to jump down an octave in a few spots, giving an odd shape to the melodic line. Greg noted without too much surprise that he was singing in Welsh. Given Mycroft’s talents, it was only to be expected, he thought….

“Just as well they don’t have you in there on stage.” Greg grinned to himself. “I can see it now. Sherlock bouncing around like a rubber ball and you up there by the mic with your hands folded, singing like a parson’s daughter on Easter Sunday.” He laughed more, as the look Mycroft shot him was pure evil.

“I shall remember this,” Mycroft said…but the two men had known each other many years, and Greg was under no illusion that the affront was real or lasting. Mycroft snipped and sniped on principle, but was in fact a very fair-minded, forgiving superior so long as you did your job and didn’t screw up too idiotically. His threats were seldom enacted—if only because on the rare occasions he made threats his subordinates were so terrified then scuttled about their work like a frenzied pond of goldfish at feeding time.

“So why are we pulling the wool over the eyes of our enemies this week,” he finally said, when he’d stopped chuckling. He took a final drag of his own cigarette and tossed it to the ground, crushing it with his heel.

“I want Sherlock to lead them on a merry dance over the next month, permitting us a chance to observe their interactions and their reports to their own handlers,” Mycroft said. “We’re planning a mission for sometime early next year, and I want to know their operating style. Especially when they interact. We no longer have the advantage of full cooperation from the EU, which means I need to pick up information on new partnerships between powers more directly. So… A little bit of misdirection. They think there’s something under way now. Sherlock will make sure they keep believing it…and will run the soles off their shoes while my people keep watch and listen in.”

Greg nodded. “Sounds good. So—what kind of impression do you want to leave?”

“Long meeting, to suggest we have a lot of information to exchange. Something unexpected to finish off with. Other than that, lean back and listen to the pretty music, Inspector. It’s a lovely summer evening and it’s not raining in the slightest. Enjoy the luxury.”

Greg grunted, nodded, then struggled out of his own jacket. “Too warm to stay suited up, in that case.”

Mycroft glanced side-eyed at the jacket laid on the bench-back beside his own fair example of the type. He failed to restrain a shudder. “Poly-cotton,” he said, mouth puckering in distaste. “Of course it’s too hot. If you’ve been wearing it all day it has to feel hot and greasy and horrid.”

Greg was accustomed to it—but now Mycroft mentioned it, he had to concede the point. “Can’t afford linen and slubbed silk,” he grumbled.

“Yes, you could. It’s not as though at this point you’re working for beans and toast. You’ve got rank with both the MET and MI5. And I know for a fact that Anthea’s been feeding you quite sensible investment suggestions for at least the years since the divorce, if not before.”

“All right, maybe I could afford it—but it would be a professional error. Greg Lestrade’s a copper. Regular guy. Wears off-the-rack cotton-poly blend from Marks and Spencer. Put too much effort into this to screw it up now.”

“When you retire, then. I’ll take you to my own tailors and see you get something to wear that isn’t a penance.”

“Ever think I might want to do my own shopping?”

“Not for suits. You will follow my advice regarding suits. You’re not stupid, after all.”

“Not if you ask Sherlock.”

“Well…Sherlock.” Mycroft sniffed. “Sherlock tries to convince me I’m stupid…I have to remind him that I’m merely middle-aged and slowing a little—but that I can still beat his drug-damaged performance hands down in a hail storm.”

“Tsk. Vanity, thy name is Mycroft.”

Mycroft sniffed yet again, and fell silent. Greg didn’t mind. A tenor he didn’t recognize was singing a slow, fierce version of “Mo Ghile Mear.”  Mycroft fell to humming along with that one, too, then slowly slipped into the lyrics. In Gaelic.

“How many languages don’t you know?”

Mycroft’s eyes were closed. He didn’t answer, instead giving himself over to the music. He would never be a performer, but he seemed as seduced by the melody as Sherlock with that damned fiddle.

“That’s one of the rebel songs, ennit?”

Mycroft nodded, but kept on singing. There was a sweet longing in his tone…not practiced or professional, but intense.

Greg kept silent, but when the song finished and Mycroft blinked his eyes open again, he asked, “So. Where were you during the last years of the Troubles?”

Mycroft give a near-invisible shrug, not answering. It was, Greg thought, a more informative silence than the other man might realize. He closed his own eyes, listening to fiddles light into a wild reel in the performance area beyond. He could somehow imagine both Holmes brothers under cover in Northern Ireland in the last years before the Good Friday Accords. Hell…he could see Mycroft’s deft perceptions providing the framework of the Accords.

The image of a wild red-headed Irish lad formed in his mind: Aran jumper with a high turtleneck and fancy knit-work, wool work pants, wellies, a tweed cap, a betting sheet in his jacket pocket. This fellow would take all night to nurse a Guinness, spend the night shooting darts and pool with the lads, ease himself invisibly into the deeply disguised gay networks of Belfast, in which desperately lonely men crossed lines of nation and religion to find a moment of human warmth—or at least a climax or two in a public loo. He could imagine that man so easily…

“When you were young, what did you think you’d be by now?”

Mycroft, still staring into the now-dark park, shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. Much of what I actually became. A good analyst.” He shifted, suddenly ferocious. “The best—the best analyst. That was my version of ambition—then and now. I could not care less for fame or rank or pay. But to know I took them all—took them down, one after the next…”

Greg was just as glad this version of Mycroft had never turned on him with that intense hunger. Holmeses…all that brain, and all that pride. Their greatest strength and their greatest downfall.

“And you?”

Greg jumped. “Huh?”

“And you—what did you think you’d become when you were a pretty young lad visiting your gran in the West Country?”

Greg gave a sudden shout of laughter. “Not a virgin,” he said, firmly. “My one and only ambition for years.”

Mycroft, caught off guard, snorted. “Well, it would appear you’re a success, then.”

“I can pull when it suits me,” Greg agreed, grinning. “But come on—once you’ve done it a couple dozen times it dawns on you that it’s not exactly rocket science. Nor anything the Queen’s gonna pin a medal on your chest for managing.”

Mycroft gave a small chuckle—a very private chuckle, as though he knew things the Queen might appreciate that others did not. Not precisely a dirty laugh, but a very human, relaxed little chortle. Greg paused, but decided there were things he did not want to know, himself. Better to leave them to Mike…Instead he said, “I dunno. Once I managed to give away my cherry and got over myself, I think all I wanted to do was leave the world a bit better than it might have been wi’out me. Catch a few bad guys. Stop the occasional disaster before it happened. I’m afraid of fires, and so fireman was right out. Did a stint in the Army, but I’m no John Watson—didn’t suit me at all, it didn’t, even when they threw me over into the Greenflies: I liked working intelligence, but I still didn’t really like the service. So—I was happy enough when MI5 came sniffing around, and I’ll tell you true, happier still when they shoved me into the MET. Beyond that?” He thought, and said, softly, “I always thought I’d be someone’s Da, someday.” He shrugged. “Some things just don’t happen.”

Mycroft nodded, then said, “It’s hardly too late. You could adopt, of course—or marry a wife young enough to give you a child.” He snorted a bit uneasily. “It’s not an uncommon choice, as I understand it. Older man starts a second life while he still can. You can have it all, Lestrade.”

Greg grimaced. “Gettin’ a bit on in years, yeah? Seems a bit hard on a kid to have gone grey before he’s ever born. She’s ever born…” Imaginary children swirled in his imagination, soft, sweet, tempting… He dismissed them with a mighty push of his will. “Not fair to the ankle-biters. Leave that to some lad still young enough to keep up with ‘em on the footie field.”

Skye Boat Song, he thought to himself. Logical after Mo Ghile Mear. More Bonnie Prince Charlie romanticism—this time from the Scottish. He knew this one, and chimed in with the burden of the refrain: Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing… He was barely started when he realized the words  were wrong. The performer was singing something else. He faltered, then stopped when Mycroft instead picked it up.

“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone—say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day over the sea to Skye…”

Greg huffed. It was even more mournful than the original. “Never heard that before.”

“Stevenson.”

“Huh?”

“Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote it. It’s still about the Young Pretender.”

Without hesitation, but instead with a teasing grin, Greg started singing “And I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more…”

“Not the Pretenders, idiot. The Proclaimers,” Mycroft grouched—but then, with a sudden sweet smile he joined in, and together, ignoring the melancholy music at the Old Oak Stage, they continued, “Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door…” They kept on, proving to both know all the lyrics…and finished laughing and gasping. Greg was fighting not to pee himself, he was laughing so hard. Mycroft Holmes singing all the verses of “I’m Gonna Be…” Who’d have thought it?

He fished in his pocket again, pulling out the packet of cigarettes. “Another before we finish up here?”

Mycroft reached for one with a smile. Greg lit both with a single strike of his lighter. They leaned back, listening to bagpipes.

“Amazing Grace,” Mycroft said. “By now you’d think that was our song, not America’s. You’d think it was written for the pipes, up in the highlands, and first performed for shaggy highland cattle.”

“It’s the Star Trek thing. And funerals. And you’ve got to admit, it sounds damned good on the pipes.”

Mycroft grumbled, but relented. “Very well. I admit. But, really, it’s melodramatic as Sherlock and his violin.”

“Fiddle.”

Dryly, he repeated, “Violin.”

“No, no, no. You really want to get under Sherlock’s skin you call it his fiddle. And every time you mention it, you forget he ‘corrected’ you. I once got him so mad his teeth actually chittered one night, like a furious squirrel.”

Mycroft gave a shout of laughter. “No…really? I thought he’d grown out of that.”

“He used to do it as a kid?”

Mycroft shot him a sly smile. “Better perhaps I don’t admit to knowing. After all—it would take something like a persistent, clever brother to tease him into it even then, wouldn’t it?”

Greg grinned back and tsked. “For shame. And here I thought you were the good brother.”

“I was a very good brother. He, however, was…otherwise. Enough so to warrant certain steps be taken to educate him in manners.” Mycroft sounded dreadfully smug.

“What did you do?”

“Oh, nothing…really. It wasn’t my fault he kept misunderstanding the puzzles I gave him.”

Greg frowned, trying to work it out. “Misunderstanding…”

Mycroft was silent, thinking, then said cautiously. “You have heard the joke about the father who is in a terrible accident with his son? The father dies…and they’re taken into the A&E? And the staff are rushing up, and everyone’s doing all they can to take care of the boy, who’s in terrible condition. So they’re in the operating room, and a doctor comes in from scrub and is just getting ready when the boy groans, and the doctor looks at him and shouts, ‘Oh, God, I can’t operate, this is my son!’”

Greg nodded. “Yeah. That’s an old one. Doctor’s his mother—people assume the doctor’s gotta be a man, though. Not so much these days, but when we were kids no one ever thought the doctor might be a woman…” He looked mischievously at Mycroft. “So—you played on Sherlock’s exceedingly rigid assumptions?”

“Mmmm. That was when he originated that perpetually annoying line about ‘eliminating the impossible.’ You would be amazed to learn how many things he believed were impossible as a boy.”

“No I wouldn’t. He’s still convinced half the commonplaces we deal with are impossible even now. Like that the MET actually gets on pretty well without him most of the time…”

Both laughed. Both smoked lazily.

“We still being watched?”

Mycroft paused, checked his mobile phone, then nodded. “Yes. Neither agent has left their station.”

 

“They must be going nuts wondering what we’re on about over here.”

“I do hope so.”

Another voice rose up, this time singing in English.

“Lark in the Clear Air,” Mycroft said.

“Mmmm?”

“Pretty.” He sighed a bit ironically. “Painfully romantic. A love ballad.”

Greg listened, not even attempting the complex slides and scales of the grace notes.

 

Dear thoughts are in my mind and my soul it soars enchanted

As I hear the sweet lark sing in the clear air of the day

For a tender, beaming smile to my hope has been granted

And tomorrow he shall hear all my fond heart longs to say…

 

The music skirled with the same wild passion as the pipes, so joyful and aching at the same time even Greg felt his eyes fill, remembering the day he’d proposed to his wife—the conviction that she’d say yes, that his hope wasn’t in vain. He glanced over at Mycroft, hoping he’d be able to wipe his eyes without being caught out…

The man sat, stricken, eyes as damp as Greg’s own…and more with longing than sentiment.

Greg looked quickly away.

How lonely it must be, he thought, to be Mycroft Holmes. Had he ever had a true love, not a mere shag? Had he ever loved—and been requited? He wore that ring on one finger, but given Mycroft that could be anything, including just a feint to confuse the enemy—just as this evening was a feint.

No one should be that alone.

Greg frowned. It wasn’t like Mycroft would be an easy lover. Hard to woo. Hard to live with even if you won your way to his heart. Hell, he had most of Sherlock’s faults and a full set of his own. He’d be worse than Greg had been for his own wife—she of the eternal straying eye and welcoming smile.

Without even thinking he threw away the fag-end of his cigarette and lit a new one. The music moved on, the happy, confident lover going on his way in complete certainty he was loved. Mycroft remained silent, in the dark, beside an equally silent Greg. For a time Greg thought they were both in luck—that Mycroft had failed to realize he’d been seen and understood.

No such luck.

“Another of those if you don’t mind.” The man’s voice was rough and uncertain.

Greg shook out another, and lit it for him, saying nothing. He’d had his own heart broken more than once. Whatever loss—or emptiness—had haunted Mycroft’s eyes as that rejoicing voice had sung of love given, love welcomed, love returned, it was nothing Greg could not understand. Loneliness hurt.

“I…”

“Not my business.” Greg tried to spare Mycroft any explanation.

“I…” He stopped, then said in a voice entirely too artificial. “No. I don’t suppose it is. Your business, that is. I mean…” He stopped again, then concentrated on sucking down smoke, hunched at his end of the bench.

It was that artificial note and the rigid phrasing that gave the rest of it away. The other shoe dropped, coming together in Greg’s head with a speed he would have thought only a Holmes could deduce. But, then…again, he’d been there. He’d been the one who loved, trying to fake indifference to the one who did not.

Oh.

He coughed up smoke, eyes watering.

Oh.

On the end of the bench there was sudden motion—Mycroft gathering himself, springing up, grabbing for the jacket draped in the middle of the bench. “Well. I think that’s probably accomplished what we set out to do.”

“Mike…”

“No—it’s late. If you don’t mind I’ll go first. You can listen to the rest of the concert…”

“Mike—sit down, you looby. The world won’t end if you stay awhile.” He leaned over, elbows on his knees, resting his chin on the heel of his hands. The smoke from the fag drifted up his cheek. He’d have to wash his face later... “I’m not about to kick you off the bench, you clot.”

Mycroft stood uneasily. “I…”

“Yeah. I kind of figured it out. Yay-me. Would you for fuck sake sit down again? You’re making me feel like my wife, and I promise you, I don’t like it much.”

Seconds seemed to stretch into infinity, though Greg knew well enough that it was nothing of the sort. Had he not been one of the starring players there would have been no question—Mycroft was not one to hesitate forever, no matter how insecure and exposed he felt. Still, the short moment he did delay ooooooozed. At last he sat. His jacket remained in his hands. He fiddled with it, inching the edge of the lapel through his fingers like a good Catholic fingering a rosary.

Lestrade smoked. Flute music began.

“Galway again?”

Mycroft cocked his head. “I don’t think so. Some other artiste.”

The fiddle joined the flautist.

“A reel,” Mycroft said.

“What’s the difference between a jig and a reel?”

“Rhythm and timing signature. A jig’s six-four. A reel’s four-four. A hornpipe’s alsofour-four but with—“

“Ne’mind. I get it sort of.” He really didn’t, but he didn’t think he could endure a lengthy explanation of dance rhythm tonight. After awhile he said, cautiously, “How long?”

Mycroft didn’t pretend not to understand. “Probably from the start. You never were hard to look at. Nor to work with.”

“Ah.  Feel a right idjit, me. If I’d known I might-a been easier to put up with, at the very least. Sure I put my foot in it more than once.”

“Surprisingly seldom. It’s not the sort of thing that becomes uncomfortable so long as all concerned know that, whatever else, love’s not on the table.” He sighed. “And, really, there are few things more hopelessly stupid than a gay man in love with a married straight. It’s not like I didn’t know that from the beginning.”

Greg almost corrected him—“Bi, and divorced now.” But he didn’t. The words were a gateway to a subject he was not sure he could address honestly or fairly. He found a more cautious approach. “So—how much background check did you do, then, when you signed me on?” If they’d dug deep—properly deep—there were men in the service and more at home who could have clarified the ambiguities of Greg’s sexuality. But—you had to know who to ask, and you had to think to ask in the first place. He’d never been promiscuous and he’d never been out. For the most part neither had his partners. No one was advertising.

Mycroft gave him a steady, suddenly speculative look. “Nothing unexpected was turned up.”

“Uh.” He sighed. “Shows I have good instincts, I guess. Surprise. ‘Straight’ can be a very fluid term.”

Mycroft made a face. “You realize that bi men have worse reputations than straights?”

“Aye. It’s no fair, is it? We always have an exit available, don’t we? A normal world you can’t enter.”

“Quite.” Yet there was something awakening in Mycroft’s voice. Not hope, exactly—but an awareness of possibility. “You never came out?”

“Never had anyone to come out for—and when I did, she was a woman, yeah? So just as well I’d never made an issue of it, I thought. Saves us both some explanations, yeah?”

“Quite.” Again, that voice weighing new options.  After a time he said, “You don’t appear offended.”

“En’t much of an insult, is it? Top dog of MI5 and MI6 thinks I’m worth a second glance? It’s not like you were a creep or a bully. Not every day I find out a good looking genius has been thinkin’ about throwin’ a leg over all these years.”

“Crass, Detective Inspector. I was not thinking of ‘throwing a leg over.’”

“Pull the other one—that’s got bells on.”

“Well…perhaps I considered attempting a pull. Occasionally. On especially empty evenings. Nothing more degrading than that.” Then, quietly, “You were always a singularly felicitous fantasy. Charming, intelligent, capable, loyal. So many of one’s fantasies prove to be unworthy.”

“Glad to be of service.” Greg heard laughter in his own voice, and probed, trying to understand what he felt. Mycroft Holmes, the eternal glacier, the deadly operative, had been attracted to him—seriously attracted to him—for a good fifteen years, give or take a year or two. Had…

Cared about him. Not just desired—nothing in his demeanor suggested mere lust. No. This was, for better or worse, the kind of attraction that is lasting, crippling, inescapable. For years Holmes had carried the longing in respectful, unobtrusive silence, leaving Greg the freedom of ignorance. Treating him with respect and professional dignity, never letting a hint escape until tonight, when a mischievous attempt to dupe two enemies had combined with a slow summer evening and a seductive scrap of song…and Greg had realized what Mycroft would never have willingly revealed.

He didn’t know how he felt about it. It was…complicated. Unexpected. Challenging.

“I haven’t been with a man in, God—a good twenty years.”

Mycroft snorted. “I assure you, the process is unchanged, barring a reduction in fear of HIV. It’s no longer the automatic death sentence it once was. Other than that, same old dangly bits. Same old ways of making the bits happy. It’s hardly worth the trouble, to tell the truth. I gave up all but the most efficient options years ago.”

His voice was cool, controlled, even a bit flip. It didn’t have the effect Greg suspected he’d intended. The emptiness of years—Greg’s, Mycroft’s—stretched out behind them. Sex reduced to efficiency. God.

“I don’t know what to say about it,” Greg said, tossing away the fag end of the cigarette, which had burned down to filter, unremembered in his fingers.

“Nothing to say.”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s big. It’s—“

“Nothing. A matter of subconscious fault lines and hormonal reflexes. I’m not even fully responsible—and you certainly are not. You can leave tonight and never think about it again with a free conscience.”

Greg frowned. “That assumes I want to walk away and never think about it again.”

The audience in the performance area exploded over something, and Greg realized he and Mycroft had been so lost in the particular intimacy of their own conversation to have completely blanked the music. He wondered if the concert were over, or if this was just intermission. He glanced at his watch.

“Late,” he said, then looked around. “They are still watching, for what it’s worth.”

The audience came swarming out of the performance area. Greg quickly concluded it was intermission; instead of leaving they stood around, lighting cigarettes, drinking wine bought at the drinks stand, talking in little clotted groups.

“A good time to go,” he said, blankly. “It would be the natural time. Easy to disappear into the mob.”

Mycroft nodded and stood, once again collecting his jacket. “Go buy yourself a beer or a glass of wine at the drinks stall. By the time you’re done I’ll be gone.”

“Quit trying to run away.” Greg glowered at the other man in the golden illumination of the park lights. “Jesus, you’d think you told me you killed my dog. I’m not that messed up, Mycroft. Look—I’ll get us both a glass of something, if you just stay the hell here, all right?”

Mycroft blinked owlishly, clearly startled and confused. “But…”

“No. No buts. We walk out of here together. I’m getting tired of feeling like a radiation leak in a pre-natal clinic. You can go later. After you drive me home. Make yourself useful—call your driver or something while I get the drinks.” He tossed his jacket to the other man. “And hang on to that. I’ll have enough to manage with my wallet and the drinks.”

Mycroft had snatched the jacket out of the air effortlessly. He wrinkled his nose at the feel of the limp cotton-poly fabric, but he draped it over his arm on top of his own elegant jacket, then fished for his mobile. “Wine,” he said, firmly, before dialing. “White wine. Cold—nothing from the stall will be worth drinking anything less than ice cold.”

Greg nodded and went to buy a glass of white and a bottle of an Indian Pale Ale that seemed perfect and crisp in the humid evening air. He crossed back in time to watch Mycroft flip the mobile shut and put it away in his trouser pocket. Soon they were strolling lazily through the still-chattering intermission crowd, heading for the exit near Wellington Arch.

“That should confuse our French and Chinese counterparts nicely,” Greg said, gulping down his icy ale.

“Mmmm. Always nice to bewilder a spy. It gives one a sense of righteous virtue.”

Greg laughed. “They aren’t going to know what to make of us leaving together.”

“Good. I would regret them deducing the reality.” Mycroft sipped elegantly at his plastic glass of wine. “Thank you, though. You’ve been most gracious. I could not ask for a kinder rejection.”

Greg sighed. “Gimme a break, Mike. I haven’t rejected you, yet. I haven’t even figured out how I feel about any of it. I mean, come on—you’ve had years to figure out what you think and feel. I’ve had the same time spent worrying about my marriage and my divorce and thinking you were—invulnerable. Untouchable…at least in any way that might matter to me. It would be great if you’d give me more than half an hour to work it through.”

After a short silence, Mycroft said, “My apologies. I suspect it’s my controlling nature. All those years you speak of I’ve been able to imagine nothing more catastrophic than for you to realize my attraction. I’ve imagined everything from a bloodied nose to a public humiliation. I had not expected understanding, much less…” his voice shook… “Much less the living hell of possibility. I find it quite terrifying, if you must know.”

“You want me to reject you now and get it over with?”

“Almost…” He sighed. “But not quite. No. I don’t know what I want. Days ago I would have said I want you—but I find now that I only want you conditionally. If you’re willing. If you’re happy. If we work together. If…if you want me, too. Quite a long string of conditions, actually. Too many to make hope easy.”

Greg grunted, drank beer, and considered.

The car met them at the kerb of the pavement opposite the Wellington arch, bringing traffic to a messy halt as the two men climbed in. Mycroft and the driver showed no sign of giving a damn. Mycroft deposited their jackets on the shelf of the back windows, then slid across the sleek leather upholstery to make room for Greg. The jaguar started up again, rolling smoothly through the night streets of the city.

Greg and Mycroft sat together, side by side, saying nothing, sipping at their drinks. After a few minutes Greg realized Mycroft was humming the tune that had outed him, managing the sliding grace notes and warbles under his breath. He was staring out the window. His adam’s apple bobbled softly as he hummed.

“What’s the song?”

“The Lark in the Clear Air. A love poem set to an old Irish melody.”

“Mmmm. Pretty.”

“Heartbreakingly so.”

Greg remembered the words at the end of the first verse—words that had struck his companion to the core. “Never thought you’d have someone you could love who’d accept it?”

Mycroft shrugged. “It’s rather against my experience. The preponderance of the evidence suggests I’m not a natural in the role.”

Greg grunted, contemplating the long, beaky nose, the small gnomish eyes, the wide, straight frog mouth. He was not unbeautiful—he had lovely skin and a kinder expression than people realized in the face of his posturing. But he was not Sherlock.

The beer was finished. He put the bottle into the little trash container hanging from the partition in front of him. “Mind if I try something?” he asked the other man.

Mycroft turned slightly, brows rising in a blend of question and acceptance. “I—oh, all right. Whatever.” He sat poised and alert.

Greg slid closer, until they were hip to hip. He slipped his arm around Mycroft’s shoulders, and pulled him close. His free hand cradled Mycroft’s jaw and turned his face. Slowly, cautiously he leaned in and pressed his lips to Mycroft’s.

The other man stiffened, pulled away—then, with grim determination, leaned back in.

He was shaking, Greg realized—shaking in tension. In terror? In desire?

He pulled Mycroft closer, lipping softly at the other man’s mouth, breathing against his skin. “Shhhh. Relax. This isn’t a trick or a joke. Can’t learn if I don’t try…”

The tension didn’t leave, but he could feel Mycroft struggling to control his shivers. He pulled more firmly until the other man rested against his chest. “It’s all right. Just be forgiving. It’s been decades…”

Mycroft gave a sigh that blended laughter and desire. “Oh… I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Natural talent I am, then. Genius for a genius, yeah?”

Mycroft opened his mouth. His tongue traced the tiny valley that ran from Greg’s nose to his upper lip. The touch was light, delicate, warm and wet… Greg opened his mouth and met Mycroft’s tongue with his own—and shivered himself when the other man moaned at the contact.

“Where are you taking me?” Greg asked.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t told the driver yet…”

Greg let his free hand trace Mycroft’s stomach, his waist, the angle of his hip, the long, shallow curve of his flank… “Take me home. Your home.”

“I…you’re sure?”

“No—and I won’t be sure unless we try. I wish I could tell you better—but I can’t. I do know I want to try.”

Mycroft grunted, then nodded. He reached forward, pressed the button that keyed the communication link, and told the driver to take them to his flat.

“I love you,” he said, apologetically. “I know you’re not ready for that yet. But—you should know before you wade in. It’s all mucky feelings and dangerous undertow. Too many feelings.”

Greg nodded. “Got that. I think I want to try anyway.”

“Why?”

Greg cuddled closer, considering everything. The warmth. The desire waking in him. The smell of Mycroft’s aftershave. The other man’s fear—and his years of willing self-denial. Memories of old exchanges with lovers in Kosovo…of lovers in Somerset under blossoming spring lilacs. Memories of what it had been like to realize over the years that whatever he and his wife had felt, it was not, properly speaking, love. He remembered tears, and failures, and little laughing victories. Screaming another man’s name to the wheeling constellations of a summer sky. Years of working with this man—trusting him. All the little, tiny bits of accumulated knowledge. In the end he could only say, “Because I want to.”

Mycroft meditated silently. Then, as the Jag pulled up in front of the building on Pall Mall, he nodded.

“I suppose that’s good enough to be getting on with, isn’t it?”

Then he leaned over, kissed Greg, and opened the car door. “Don’t forget the jackets,” he said, and walked gracefully to the elegant entrance, already pulling his security card from his wallet.

Greg, watching him, smiled, collected their jackets, and followed.

It would be an interesting night.


End file.
